Hurricane Causes Minor Damage at Johnson Space Center

by John Kelly, FLORIDA TODAY | September 25, 2005 02:09pm ET

The exterior of the NASA facility in New Orleans East is damaged by the recent hurricanes as the storm from Hurricane Rita continues for a second day, Saturday, Sept. 24, 2005. External fuel tanks for the space shuttle are built at the facility.Credit: AP Photo/Bill Haber.

The storm's shift to the
east Friday meant the Houston area did not get the worst of Rita's fierce winds
or storm surge. A direct hit could have sent sea water as far inland as the
space center, near Galveston Bay.

NASA instructed government
and contractor workers to check in today to find out whether they would be able
to return to duty Monday. A building-to-building damage assessment Saturday
found mostly minor problems.

The center evacuated
Wednesday as Rita appeared on course to barrel into Galveston Bay as an intense Category 4 or Category 5 hurricane.

JSC is home to 13,000 workers,
including the astronaut corps and mission controllers. It is NASA's prime
center for design, development and testing of human spacecraft.

The shuttle and
International Space Station programs are headquartered at JSC. Mission Control,
where teams work around the clock watching over the space station and its
two-man crew, shut down too. Primary control of the space station transferred
to Russia's Mission Control Center outside Moscow.

Facilities at JSC are ready
to reopen Monday. Still unknown is the status of thousands of workers and their
homes.

Workers were to report
their location and personal situations to NASA on Saturday and today so the
agency could assess what services could be restarted Monday.

Rita did no new damage to
the shuttle external tank factory in New Orleans, which has been closed since
Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city.

The Michoud tank factory
remains closed except to a small group of emergency personnel. NASA hopes to
resume work on external tanks with a minimal number of employees as early as
Oct. 1.

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